Financial Security · 11:23am Jan 3rd, 2019
After 4 years of trying and failing, I have finally gotten disability assistance from the Fed. It's just a matter of time before I also get on other programs I qualify for thanks to my conditions. As a result, I am financially stable. I no longer require your donations to feed and shelter myself. While I absolutely appreciate everyone who helped me through the last two years, I am very glad to no longer be living exclusively off of my stories.
I feel wonderful. Like I can write for myself again instead of writing for what I believed my patreons wanted on average. In hindsight, I don't think I knew what you guys wanted at all. I was worried that my frequency of posting chapters was all that kept me being someone worth supporting. I was doing quantity first and foremost, with crowd pleasing as a second. I was being stupid.
You guys don't follow and support me for what I WANT to do, you did it for what I DID do. I have no idea why I didn't see that before. Maybe it was fear of being homeless? ... Okay, it was PROBABLY that 
All of that is in the past! Now I can feel safe and secure. There's a huge Federally managed trust fund that's keeping me fed, sheltered, and with enough discretionary spending to be able to get the occasional nice thing I might want if I save for a bit. I am free once more to write for fun!
So I will.
Years ago, when I first started writing, fun meant fast and loose stories which I did mostly to make tons of nerdy jokes and poke fun at the tropes I commonly saw used in other fanfics. Right now what seems the most fun is to blow the dust off my Degree and make some proper art. Whittling little figurines in an afternoon is fun and all, but sometimes you want to take your time and see what you can really do. Now is that time.
What's that mean? Well it means I may not make a chapter every week. With my current stories, you guys have read my first draft every single chapter. Yep... Sorry :c
- With my next story, there will be none of that. Things will be posted regularly, but only when they are READY for readers.
- No more winging it. Each story will be outlined at MINIMUM by 10 chapters ahead of where the currently published chapter is.
That's all. Yep. Just that!
What? It's a lot more work than I've invested in my older stories (the ones I've posted here anyways). I'm currently working my way through my old writing books. Ones' I used in college, and also ones I have had for fun, as well as books meant to help me with world building, story telling, and other such things. There are a LOT of them.
BEHOLD! One pico-Twi of books!
My god, it's easier to count them by inches of height!
So yeah... New year. Fresh start! Fresh story. It may not start for a bit, but it will start soonish. I'm goign to go re-read all of these while I keep outlining my Fallout Equestria stroy...
Say, how is that going anyways?
Oh god! Half of that is backstory stuff for world building to reveal later >.<
Meh, this is what I do :3
Anywho, 7.5 chapters are outlined, will start writing when I get the 11th outlined.
The Starflight Handbook is very solid. Also what is that book on small arms?
I'm so glad to hear things are going well for you! I always thought it was messed up that you weren't able to get on disability for so long...But well it looks like that's all over now! Things are really looking up!
Well congratulations! Good heavens, if you consider what you've written in the past to be of secondary quality, I can't imagine what your best effort is going to be like.
Good news all around, I'd say.
Yay!
This is good news
4990424 The Small Arms Visual Encyclopedia is exactly what the title implies. It is a book that provides simple pictures, limited descriptive text, and knowledge of the workings of basic mechanisms for pretty much every single major firearm ever made in chronological order. And I do mean ever made.
i.imgur.com/IuI9DAV.jpg
It lets you quickly find weapons appropriate to a given historical era and gives you visual appearances of them as well as basic rundowns. The same publisher has a similar book for just about every other form of weapon and vehicle.
i.imgur.com/AN2qt30.jpg
4990425 Yeah that was nuts! Though I think I am getting backpay for the whole time. Not sure about that, I need to talk to my agent.
4990426
I do. I like it, but it's not my best and I know it. My best was featured in my collage's magazine 3 issues in a row. I've never gotten less than a B+ in any creative writing class. I've been intentionally posting fanfics by fanfic standards when i can and have written things of professional standards before.
That is very mentally draining to do... I dont want to do it every time. But god dammit... Fallout Equestria is worth it! That story literally saved my life by giving me a reason to stop being suicidal via teaching me that finding purpose is a jouny, not a revelation. Fate willing, by this time next year kkat will have read my work and smiled.
I'll anxiously await for it, Meeps
congrats
Congratulations
Oh, you have the Starflight Handbook! It's an amazing book, I just hope I didn't lose my copy in my recent move.
4990467 Wanna see something cool?
i.imgur.com/79WhRYZ.jpg
Some guy at NASA did journal entries in my copy :3
4990470
That's awesome
Hey, it's about time the government got something right. Congratulations Meep!
Glad to hear the good news Meep.
And a happy new year!
Glad to hear that you are in firmer financial shape.
I’m really glad to hear that. It’s crazy how hard our government works to keep people from getting the help they need.
Nice! Its good to see things turning out well for you Meep. Bout time for your luck to change for the better.
Pico twis
Good to see things working out for you. Will be looking forward to seeing what you cook up in the future.
4990503 4990571 I find it funny that I got in AFTER Trump tightened the restrictions up. But also pretty distressing. I guess that when the psychologist said I wont be able to function in a work environment for long that she really did mean exactly that :c
I mean, she's not wrong... First job made me want to plunge my arm into a deep firer to get to go home within a month (I almost did too, was stopped by manager). Second job wasn't so bad but my manager said i was way too slow and fired me after a while. Third Job should have been an episode of Kitchen Nightmares and I could actually feel my blood pressure within 10 minutes of realisinzg I had to go to work on a given day and nearly had a heart attack on shift twice (and I'm not like fat enough for that to be a thing that can happen from basic activity). Last job I was fired after 2 days because "You just wont fit in here."
So, I mean... :/
4990511 Happy New Year to you too! THis once certainly looks to be better than the last one :3
4990521 Thanks, DJ :3 I hope you're doing well too.
4990713 If my luck has changed, I'll be sure to let Princess Celestia know that other people would love to come over for tea too :3 What? If my luck 180ed I'd absolutely derp my way into a parallel universe where ponies are a thing.
4990761 Well we need some unit for quantifying the size of a library vs another library. COmparing total number of books is not a good idea. There are jsut too many books! 2,399,213 vs 2,389,943 is way less quantifiable than "A quarter of a Twi vs half a Twi." Of course, one Twi of books would be 27,000,000,000,000 volumes. Which you know, seems like roughly how many books Twilight would have on her at a given time.
So glad you got on that. Congratulations!
4990835
That doesn't help at all as it only shifts the scale. Now you're comparing 0.000,000,088,86 Twi vs 0.000,000,088,516 Twi.
Using a Twi to compare 23,500,000,000,000 (1/2 Twi) to 11,750,000,000,000 (1/4 Twi) only gets rid of excess digits which you can easily solve using scientific notation 2.35*1013 vs 1.175*13
Given that a Twi is an amount of books you're also still comparing total number of books. How to compare libraries is only constricted by what information you want to gain. Other methods would be Volume of Library, Volume of stored books, word count and total length of text (given all are normed to one size, including/excluding whitespaces...)
I'd recommend using the fraction of one library to another (I'm using # of books here). Which would give ~1.004 or 0.996 depending which one is the divisor. That way you get a handy indicator of relative sizes. And if it's around 1 the Libraries are roughly the same size.
Ooooorrr, if you're really evil you can create some awkward ugly function to define a comparison index which depends on loads of arbitrary Data like location or temperature...
4990975 You're right! But we both missed the core of the comparson here. We want to do apples to apples, not apples to oranges.
We're comparing number of books when that's not the critical factor here in determining which library holds more information. Books are NOT the same length! A Twi should be equal to a number of words which are unique strings. This way you do not count multiple copies of the same book within a library.
So IF we set 1 Twi to 27 billion words within unique strings of text, where each string is the intended to be read portion of a book (excluding the title, table of contents, and all indexes, glossaries, and so on), and no duplicate string is counted, THEN we have a useful metric to compare libraries with :3
I am SO happy to hear things are going better for you *hugs tight*. Will miss being able to help support you and keep ya fed (I like having me good friends alive after all) but yeah if you feel things are well enough now to go without that I can understand. Will write more later (or on Discord) as I need to get ready for work, but just wanted to drop a note and say way to go! Keep up the good work and do what you gotta do. :)